First Riverdale, Then The World!

Now that the World Trade Center has already been hit, we need to go for the second-best thing:

The four men arrested Wednesday night in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y. were petty criminals who appeared to be acting alone, not in concert with any terrorist organization, the New York City police commissioner said Thursday.

The men were arrested in an elaborate sting operation at around 9 p.m. on Wednesday after planting what they believed to be bombs in cars outside the Riverdale Temple, a Reform synagogue, and the nearby Riverdale Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue.

. . .

[James] Cromitie, whose parents had lived in Afghanistan before his birth, had told the informant that he was upset about the war in Afghanistan and that that he wanted to do “something to America.” Mr. Cromitie stated “the best target” — the World Trade Center — “was hit already,” according to the complaint.

Pile On . . . The $80 Dirt

Of course it takes years to build something when you’re excavating dirt by the teaspoonful:

While the Yankees scoop teaspoonfuls of dirt from their old stadium to sell for upwards of $80 each, the community that lost its parks to the new stadium are still waiting for a ballfield of their own.

With the demolition of the House that Ruth Built expected to take nearly a year and a half, it will be late 2010 before work can even begin on Heritage Field, the park to replace most of the ballfields swallowed up three years ago to make way for the $1.5 billion new Yankee Stadium.

Location Scout: Old Yankee Stadium.

If You Want To Understand Why We Pay Such High Taxes In New York, Start Here

The cost of rebuilding the I-34W Bridge in Minneapolis was $234 million. The cost of rebuilding the dinky City Island Bridge in the Bronx has now risen to $120 million:

After several years of delays, planning and community opposition, the cost of replacing the 108-year-old City Island Bridge has risen to $120 million.

Back on Aug. 20, 2003 — when Mayor Bloomberg announced plans for a new high-tech bridge “as unique as the island itself” — the cost was estimated at $32 million.

The new bridge project has yet to get started, with the latest launch date now set for next year.

“What are they building, the Bridge on the River Kwai?” groaned Councilman James Vacca (D-Bronx), whose district includes the tiny, isolated community surrounded by Long Island Sound and Eastchester Bay.

He and other critics of the city’s plans to build a “signature bridge,” with suspension cables evoking the island’s sailing past, said they’d be far happier with a cheaper remake of the current ugly-duckling span.

“We’ve been handed a bridge that we just hate,” said Barbara Dolensek, vice president of the City Island Historial Society and the Civic Association.

“They wanted something that would put their names on the map.”

You Remember Your Middle School Teacher’s Name . . . Who Will Remember Yours?

And if you scare half the city by barricading yourself in a classroom, you get even better name recognition:

Apparently distraught over being removed from a school in the Bronx, a veteran teacher barricaded himself inside a classroom at the school on Friday morning, claiming that he had planted a bomb in the library and threatening to blow it up, the authorities said. About 1,200 students were evacuated, and within three hours, police officials escorted the teacher from the building and said his bomb claim had been false.

. . .

Mr. Garabitos’s bomb threat sent educators and police officers from the Emergency Services Unit scrambling to take precautions and assess the threat. The Police Department dispatched several officers, hostage negotiators and bomb squad technicians to the building, which also houses Junior High School 145 and the Urban Science Academy.

. . .

During negotiators’ talks with Mr. Garabitos while he was barricaded in the classroom, Mr. Browne said, he admitted that he had planted no bomb, but said he had undertaken a hunger strike over the way a disciplinary case against him had been handled. He also said he wanted to see the principal “ousted,” Mr. Browne said.

Ron Davis, a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, said that Mr. Garabitos called the city union’s central offices on Friday morning and asked to speak with Randi Weingarten, the president of the union. After he was told she was in Washington (she is also the head of the American Federation of Teachers, the parent union based there), he later spoke to another union official who, with the guidance of police hostage negotiators, assured him that he would be safe and urged him to leave the building.

. . .

At a news conference on Friday afternoon, Ms. Weingarten, the union president, said: “No grievance is redressable in this way. We do not condone this behavior at all.”

She said that a list of concerns prepared by Mr. Garabitos was turned over to the Education Department by the union and that she hoped they would be addressed later.

The Legacy Of Robert Moses Is That To This Day He Remains Useful If Only To Blame Stuff On

I think they mean “50-foot” structure, not “500-foot” because that would be, like, huge, but point taken:

Once your eyes adjust to the scale of the New York City Panorama, it’s easy to spot Riverdale’s most familiar sights in all their miniature glory. The Whitehall Building, Van Cortlandt Mansion, and the 242nd Street Station rise up from a shrunken Bronx in the form of petite replicas.

But look toward Bell Tower Park in search of Riverdale’s best-known landmark and you’ll find nothing but a small, lonely white patch. The traffic circle is there, as are the trees and homes and highway that surround it. Yet the Bell Tower itself, a 500-foot structure cherished by residents, sightseers and historians alike, doesn’t exist in this alternate version of the city.

Urban planning czar Robert Moses and model-builder Raymond Lester may have taken painstaking care in creating the world’s largest urban panorama for the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens (now housed at the Queens Museum of Art), but when it came to Riverdale’s 79-year-old tower and World War I veteran’s memorial, also known as The Monument, the pair apparently didn’t sweat the details.

There are about 895,000 individual structures replicated in the panorama, 25,000 of which are New York landmarks like skyscrapers, museums and major churches. They are custom built with striking detail.

Countless smaller structures are represented with generic blocks of wood and plastic. But The Monument didn’t even get that. Does the museum plan to place a tiny tower on the barren spot?

“I’m not sure what went into the decision making in 1964, but we’d love to work with the folks in Riverdale to see if we can get it put on there,” said the museum’s director for external relations, David Strauss, adding that even though he’s from Queens, he knows exactly where the real Bell Tower is in Riverdale. “The fact that I know the exact spot speaks to the idea that maybe it should be on there.”

Location Scout: Bell Tower Park, The Panorama of the City of New York.